South Korea's first astronaut and her two crew-mates talk to the media
after a bumpy return to earth.

 STAR CITY, MOSCOW REGION, RUSSIA (APRIL 21, 2008) REUTERS -

South Korea's first astronaut Yi So-yeon, Russian cosmonaut Yuri
Malenchenko and U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson shared their experience of
ballistic landing on Monday (April 21) at the Russian Star City outside
Moscow.
    Yi So-yeon, a nanotechnology engineer from Seoul, who returned to Earth
after 11 days aboard the International Space Station, said said she was scared
during landing, but expressed confidence in the Russian-designed Soyuz
re-entry capsule which they landed in on Saturday, April 19, 420 kilometres
off course.
    "I respect all the engineers who design Soyuz and make the Soyuz.
It's my impression, I think they are really really great engineers. As an
engineer I really respect them," said Yi So-yeon.
    A technical glitch made their re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere much
steeper than usual, and they landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan.
   "As for the ballistic landing, when we started landing and some
time after, everything was fine, and then the system, after we had separated
and entered the atmosphere, automatically switched to ballistic landing. The
crew didn't do anything to cause this, we didn't have any reasons to,"
said Yuri Malenchenko, Russian flight engineer to journalists at a
press-conference in the Star city.
    The so-called "ballistic" re-entry exposed the crew to twice
the usual gravitational forces.
    "The start on Soyuz is softer than the start on the shuttle, but I
think the other way, during landing, it was harder on Soyuz than on the
shuttle," said U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson, who returned to earth after
185 days in space. She described the ballistic landing as irregular, but not
an emergency.
    Whitson appeared frail and was escorted by a Russian space agency
worker to her seat at the news conference.
    In October, a Soyuz capsule carrying Malaysia's first space tourist
touched down about 200km (125 miles) off course in a similar ballistic landing
caused by a technical glitch.